Hands off Bayview Hunters Point!An open letter to the San Francisco Board of Supervisorshttp://www.sfbayview.com/050306/handsoff050306.shtml

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"The Democrats always promise to help workers, and the don't!The Republicans always promise to help business, and the do!"- Mort Sahl

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Palestine, Sudan & the Myth of a "Humanitarian" U.S. Foreign PolicyTues. June 13, 7pmS.F. Women's Building 3543 18th St. (btwn Valencia and Guerrero)near 16th St. BART, San FranciscoA.N.S.W.E.R. Educational Forum

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

People United For a General and Unconditional AmnestyRally Monday, June 19, 2006, 5:00 P.M.Palou Avenue and Third Street, S.F.

No matter what the decisions the lawmakers make to "reform" the immigration laws, we know that they will make some immigrant workers "legal" and others "illegal."

We will hold a rally June 19, 2006 at 5:00 p.m. at Palou Avenue and Third Street in San Francisco to demand General and Unconditional Amnesty for All Immigrants. We hold this rallyin celebration of the date of June 19th, 141 years ago when it was declared the end of slavery by Black people in this country.

Our Black brothers and sisters continue to be a slave of racism and injustice just as we immigrants. And the government continues to put on Death Row the great leaders of the Black movement such as Mumia Abu-Jamal.

We make a call for unity at this rally in the Bayview so we can honor June 19th by making a commitment to sow the first seeds together in order to make a reality the emancipation of the Black people and the immigrants and to demand the immediate freedom of the great leader of the Black people, Mumia Abu-Jamal, innocent on Death Row.

ABOLISHING JROTC in SAN FRANCISCO SCHOOLSThere will be a special meeting in July whenthe School Board will vote on this resolution.The meeting date is to be announced.School District Office555 Franklin StSan Francisco415/241-6427

Report and Open letter to the Board of Education regarding JROTC:

At the first reading of the resolution to rid the schoolsof JROTC on the basis of the policy of "Don't ask, don't tell" that discriminates against gay's in the military, whichwas presented to the Board of Education meeting on May 23, the JROTC teachers (all retired military officers) mobilized students to speak on behalf of JROTC. Carole Seligman and I spoke to many students in the lobby before the meeting began. Repeatedly they expressed that they loved the program. It gives them confidence in themselves, provides a supportive environment, encourages good scholarship in school, and encourages comradeship among the members.

So much so, that a young girl had a silver-colored chain with a tinysilver-colored and diamond studded bullet. I really couldn't believeit was a bullet so I asked her if it was. She said, "oh! this? Yes, it's a bullet. You know, it's between me and my friend, you know, like, 'I'll take a bullet for you!'"

Need I say more about the virtues of JROTC?

Unfortunately, the resolution that follows says nothing of thisaspect of JROTC. Nothing about the war. Nothing about young peoplebeing taught to "take a bullet for each other". Nothing about therealities of war. Nothing about asking students, gay or not, to risk their lives and take the lives of Iraqis for this inhumanand illegal war brought about by an inhuman and illegalgovernment.

It was announced by gay supporters of JROTC at the meeting that they expected the military to lift the prohibition on gaysin the military this year. If this is true this will make thisresolution obsolete before it can ever take effect. Are we to cheerthat our gay brothers and sisters will be able to fight in this war?What is our plan to convince young gay and straight students that they can't"be all they can be" if they are dead; or legless and armless; or with the blood of too many dead in their hearts and head; or permanentlybrain-damaged; burnt or blinded by exploding eyeballs and deafened byexploding eardrums? Who will tell them of depleted uranium illness? Who will tell them that although there is a very high survival rate for our injured soldiers there is also a very high rate of survival with such catastrophic injury and illness? Who will tell them that they are morelikely to be homeless after serving than in college? Who will tellthem about the logic of "following orders" and a "chain of command"Instead of thinking and reasoning and making decisions for themselvesleads to disaster?

If you haven't seen it, I suggest you watch the HBO special, "Baghdad ER". In fact it should be shown to all of our students in middle and high school. (It's far too explicit for very young children.)

We and the majority of the voters in San Francisco wantthe military out of our schools immediately!

Here are my comments for the meeting. I was cut off midway through my timed one-minute delivery. The resolution follows my comments. Please look at it again and see that avital antiwar message is missing from it and correct andamend the resolution immediately to reflect oppositionto the militarization of our schools and the offering up of ourstudents as cannon fodder for this bloodthirsty and greedy government and it's military might.

We want a world without war! How can we teach children that violence is not the answer when the most powerfuland influential adults in the world--our government--uses it as their ultimate tool to gain wealth and power for themselves.

You must take a stronger antiwar stand! I don't care how manyantiwar resolutions you have passed. The proof of the pudding is in the military presence in our schools!

Sincerely,Bonnie Weinstein

Addressed to the President, Vice President and the Commissioners of the San Francisco Board of Education:

I commend the board members who are bringing the motion to rid our schools of JROTC forward. This is in line with the wishes of the majority of the voters in San Francisco who voted to get the military out of our schools this past November. The military’s policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” is unacceptable. Our obligation is to educate our children against prejudice of all kinds—not turn a blind eye—and turn a bigoted military loose on them. But that is not the only reason we want the military and JROTC out.

We want our children to engage in physical education, in fact, to find joy in it; and to study history—to learn how to avoid the mistakes of the past; to gain satisfaction and experience joy in learning so they can contribute to human knowledge themselves as well as help fashion a better world!

We want our children to feel responsible to her or his community. We want students to gain a sense of responsibility and pride in a job well done by contributing to the life and well being of their school, their home and their community.

We don’t want to teach our children to blindly obey a chain of command or to glorify war. In fact, it is our duty to teach our children that blind obedience, violence, greed, bigotry, prejudice, human inequality, torture, pre-emptive war, profiting off of war and injustice, inequality in the application of the law, and poverty in the face of fantastic wealth is wrong, inhuman and intolerable and we can do better!

We must rid our schools of the military and JROTC, hire enough Physical Education teachers immediately, and re-dedicate our schools to education and human development—and reject the road to war and militarism.

Just one more thing, I want to correct the notion that the new school policy regarding military recruiters has resulted in less military presence in our schools. In fact, it has resulted in more. Many schools did not invite the military on Career Day and now they must, and that is a shame, because we want the military out! We don’t want our children to study war or bigotry any more! Not for one more second!

Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War, www.bauaw.org, 415-824-8730

The resolution:

Introduction of Replacement Program for JROTC --Commissioners Mark Sanchez and Dan Kelly

WHEREAS: It is the official policy of the San Francisco Unified School District to oppose discrimination of any kind against any group of people; and

WHEREAS: The District’s opposition to discrimination is articulated in Board Policy 5163, which provides that the San Francisco Unified School District shall not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, creed, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, or handicapping condition in the provision of educational programs, services, and activities, in the admission of students to school programs and activities; and in the recruitment and employment of personnel; and

WHEREAS: The San Francisco Unified School District deplores the "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" policy of the U.S. Department of Defense, which requires the discharge of any member of the armed forces if such service member has engaged in "homosexual acts," has revealed that s/he is a homosexual or bisexual, or the member has married or attempted to marry a person known to be of the same biological sex; and

WHEREAS: The District believes that the "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" policy is an unjust, indefensible, unintelligent, state-sanctioned act of homophobia; and

WHEREAS: The San Francisco Unified School District cannot justify committing any funding to a JROTC program because its connection to the U.S. Department of Defense suggests that discrimination against some groups is tolerable.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED: That the Board of Education of the San Francisco Unified School District calls for the phasing –out of the JROTC program of the United States Department of Defense on San Francisco Unified School District campuses; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: That the Board of Education instructs District staff to provide all JROTC units at SFUSD campuses with one year notice that the programs will be terminated at all SFUSD campuses after the 2006-2007 school year; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: That the Board of Education calls for the creation of a special task force to develop alternative, creative, career-driven programs which provide students with a greater sense of purpose and respect for self and humankind.

Board has plan to oust ROTC from S.F. schools Members want to cut program over 'Don't ask, Don't tell'The students engage in physical training such as running, push-ups and jumping jacks; and discipline training such as marching, drill-practice and using a mock chain of command. They also study military history and perform community service. - Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff WriterTuesday, May 23, 2006 http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/23/MNGIOJ0G7P1.DTL

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Great Counter-Recruitment Websitehttp://notyoursoldier.org/article.php?list=type&type=14

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SCROLL DOWN TO READ:EVENT ANNOUNCEMENTSGENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTSARTICLES IN FULLLINKS ONLY

People United For a General and Unconditional AmnestyRally Monday, June 19, 2006, 5:00 P.M.Palou Avenue and Third Street, S.F.

No matter what the decisions the lawmakers make to "reform" the immigration laws, we know that they will make some immigrant workers "legal" and others "illegal."

We will hold a rally June 19, 2006 at 5:00 p.m. at Palou Avenue and Third Street in San Francisco to demand General and Unconditional Amnesty for All Immigrants. We hold this rallyin celebration of the date of June 19th, 141 years ago when it was declared the end of slavery by Black people in this country.

Our Black brothers and sisters continue to be a slave of racism and injustice just as we immigrants. And the government continues to put on Death Row the great leaders of the Black movement such as Mumia Abu-Jamal.

We make a call for unity at this rally in the Bayview so we can honor June 19th by making a commitment to sow the first seeds together in order to make a reality the emancipation of the Black people and the immigrants and to demand the immediate freedom of the great leader of the Black people, Mumia Abu-Jamal, innocent on Death Row.

Last summer the U.S. Border Patrol arrested Shanti Sellz and Daniel Strauss, both 23-year-old volunteers assisting immigrants on the border, for medically evacuating 3 people in critical condition from the Arizona desert.

Criminalization for aiding undocumented immigrants already exists on the books in the state of Arizona. Daniel and Shanti are targeted to be its first victims. Their arrest and subsequent prosecution for providing humanitarian aid could result in a 15-year prison sentence. Any Congressional compromise with the Sensenbrenner bill (HR 4437) may include these harmful criminalization provisions. Fight back NOW!

Help stop the criminalization of undocumented immigrants and those who support them!

ISF is a nonprofit organization created through the settlement of Idriss Stelley's vs. City & County and SFPD case and its allocation to his mother Mesha Monge-Irizarry.

Her only child, a 23 year old African American honor student was killed by SFPD at the SF Sony Metreon on June 13, 2001. 48 shots! 9 officers! He stood alone in an empty theater.

Mesha now operates the Idriss Stelley Foundation, a 24 HR bilingual crisis line (415) 595-8251 that has broadened its services to all people negatively impacted by law enforcement.

Idriss Stelley's case is at the root of the 40-HR mandatory SFPD Mental Health Training. ISF provides free, confidential services to victims, biological and extended families who are negatively impacted by law enforcement

ISF office is located at 4921 3rd St., in the heart of Bayview District,between Palou and Quesada in San Francisco and is open Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday from noon to 8 pm.

Please come out Sunday June 25, 2006 at 1pm to enjoy food, drinks and live entertainment in support of ISF. (21+ Please)

$5-500 DONATION ACCEPTED AT THE DOOR. NO PERSON TURNED AWAY FOR LACK OF FUNDS BUT PLEASE COME AND SUPPORT!

***IF YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO ATTEND BUT WOULD STILL LIKE TO DONATE TO THE IDRISS STELLEY FOUNDATION PLEASE CONTACT US VIA EMAIL AT RAP4RIGHTS@AOL.COM***

Fourth Annual International Al-Awda ConventionSan Francisco - July 14-16, 2006To register: http://al-awda.org/sf-conv_reserve.htmlTo flyer, the writing is on the wall: http://al-awda.org/pdf/flyer.pdfFor all other info: http://al-awda.org

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REMINDER TO ALL GROUPS: BE SURE AND POST ALL ACTIONS ANDEVENTS TO WWW.INDYBAY.ORG TO REACH THE MOST PEOPLEAGAINST THE WAR IN THE BAY AREA!http://www.indybay.org

"Calculated in real 2005 dollars, the 1968 minimum wage was the highest at $9.12. "The 8 dollar per hour Whole Foods employees are being paid $1.12 less than the 1968 minimum wage.

"A federal minimum wage was first set in 1938. The graph shows both nominal (red) and real (blue) minimum wage values. Nominal values range from 25 cents per hour in 1938 to the current $5.15/hr. The greatest percentage jump in the minimum wage was in 1950, when it nearly doubled. The graph adjusts these wages to 2005 dollars (blue line) to show the real value of the minimum wage. Calculated in real 2005 dollars, the 1968 minimum wage was the highest at $9.12. Note how the real dollar minimum wage rises and falls. This is because it gets periodically adjusted by Congress. The period 1997-2006, is the longest period during which the minimum wage has not been adjusted. States have departed from the federal minimum wage. Washington has the highest minimum wage in the country at $7.63 as of January 1, 2006. Oregon is next at $7.50. Cities, too, have set minimum wages. Santa Fe, New Mexico has a minimum wage of $9.50, which is more than double the state minimum wage at $4.35."

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PRESERVE INTERNET NETWORK NEUTRALITY

Hi,I can't imagine that you haven't seen this, but if youhaven't, please sign the petition to keep our access.Everything we do online will be hurt if Congresspasses a radical law next week that gives giantcorporations more control over what we do and see onthe Internet.

Internet providers like AT&T are lobbying Congresshard to gut Network Neutrality--the Internet's FirstAmendment and the key to Internet freedom. Right now,Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing whichwebsites open most easily for you based on which sitepays AT&T more. BarnesandNoble.com doesn't have tooutbid Amazon for the right to work properly on yourcomputer.

If Net Neutrality is gutted, many sites--includingGoogle, eBay, and iTunes--must either pay protectionmoney to companies like AT&T or risk having theirwebsites process slowly. That why these high-techpioneers, plus diverse groups ranging from MoveOn toGun Owners of America, are opposing Congress' effortto gut Internet freedom.

NO BORDERS! NO WALLS! NO FENCES! GENERAL AMNESTY FOR ALL!OUR HOMELAND IS WHERE WE LIVE!

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REPEAL THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT IN 2007!Check out: 10 EXCELLENT REASONS NOT TO JOIN THE MILITARYhttp://www.10reasonsbook.com/Public Law print of PL 107-110, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 [1.8 MB] http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/index.htmlAlso, the law is up before Congress again in 2007. See this article from USA Today:Bipartisan panel to study No Child Left BehindBy Greg Toppo, USA TODAYFebruary 13, 2006http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-02-13-education-panel_x.htm

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The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonieshttp://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.htmlhttp://www.law.ou.edu/hist/decind.htmlhttp://www.usconstitution.net/declar.htmlhttp://www.indybay.org/news/2006/02/1805195.php

Bill of Rightshttp://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.htmlhttp://www.indybay.org/news/2006/02/1805182.php

3) Three Prisoners Commit Suicide at GuantánamoBy JAMES RISEN and TIM GOLDEN"They are smart, they are creative, they are committed," Admiral Harris said. "They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."June 11, 2006http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/us/11gitmo.html?hp&ex=1150084800&en=4e0a572a10c327d6&ei=5094&partner=homepage

4) How Hispanics Became the New GaysBy FRANK RICHJune 11, 2006http://select.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/opinion/11rich.html?hp

IT was when his immigration attorney asked him for $3,000 several years ago that Celso Lima Mejia started to wonder whether his lawyer was taking him for a very costly ride. Mr. Mejia, a Guatemalan immigrant who was residing illegally in the United States, said he had already paid Miguel Gadda $3,600 to help him apply for asylum. Mr. Mejia recalled in a recent interview that Mr. Gadda promised him that the legal fees — a large chunk of his annual pay of about $20,000 as a handyman — would land him a coveted prize: a green card allowing him to come out from the shadows and live in the United States as a permanent resident.

But immigration authorities rejected the application, and Mr. Mejia said Mr. Gadda pressed him for the extra $3,000 to appeal the decision. Until that point, Mr. Mejia said, Mr. Gadda had done virtually no work on the case — "He hadn't even done any prep work with me before my hearing" — but his asylum application had revealed him to immigration authorities. Mr. Mejia, who is now 29, felt that he had to keep fighting, so he scrounged up the money. And that was the last time he saw Mr. Gadda.

When Mr. Mejia found a deportation order in his mail in 2001, he rushed in panic to his lawyer's office. "But the office wasn't there anymore, and there was nowhere to find him," said Mr. Mejia, who gained permanent resident status — his green card — after turning to a second lawyer he described as "my angel."

Mr. Mejia wasn't Mr. Gadda's only victim. When the State Bar of California disbarred Mr. Gadda in 2002, it cited him for professional misconduct and legal incompetence involving eight illegal immigrants he had advised. (Mr. Mejia's case was not among them.)

Mr. Gadda is hardly alone. As the number of illegal immigrants in the country has swollen to what the Department of Homeland Security conservatively estimates at nine million, so have the ranks of those who inhabit the immigration business's underbelly, posing as well-meaning advisers to those in search of a new job, a new home and a green card if not full citizenship. Immigrants, strangers in a foreign land for whom a green card means a ticket to a fuller life, are ideal prey for con artists and would-be consultants out for a quick buck.

ANALYSTS, lawyers and immigration specialists say that the current debate over immigration reform is also providing a perfect business environment for those who prey on the undocumented in the Chinatowns, barrios and other immigrant enclaves around the country.

"Every time there's talk of a new law passing, these scammers basically pop up" and aim at immigrants, said Victor D. Nieblas, an immigration lawyer based in Los Angeles who teaches at Loyola Law School there. "It's big business."

The worst offenders, Mr. Nieblas and others said, tend to be immigration consultants, or "notarios" — nonlawyers who, whether or not they are qualified to do so, are in the business of helping aliens negotiate the immigration system. Even the name "notarios" rankles immigrant advocates: in many Latin American countries, a "notario público" is a professional licensed to represent people in legal matters.

"For unscrupulous attorneys and other practitioners, a change in the law represents a kind of open season on aliens," said Jennifer J. Barnes, the general counsel for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a unit of the Justice Department. "That's what's happened in the past when we've enacted changes in immigration law, and I'm sure if a new law passes this time, we'll see people out there trying to take advantage of the situation."

Yet that seems to be happening already. People who closely monitor the national immigration debate may know that the House of Representatives and the Senate are so far apart on their immigration bills that no new amnesty laws may be enacted — but that information reaches illegal immigrants only in fractured pieces. Even then, immigrant advocates say, some notarios and others milking the process for financial gain warp and bend the true parameters of asylum opportunities to take advantage of legions of hopefuls.

Mr. Nieblas, who is a host of a weekly immigration advice program on a Spanish-language radio station in Southern California, said he was already hearing from callers who contended that local notarios were "asking them for money so they can start processing people under the new law, though there is no new law."

Lori A. Nessel, an associate professor at the Seton Hall University School of Law who runs its Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, has picked up on the same chatter on the East Coast.

"The concern is that you have these notarios out there saying, 'Pay now and get your applications in now for the amnesty,' when there's no reason to be taking people's money until there's a law," Professor Nessel said.

Nelly Reyes is a well-regarded immigration consultant in San Francisco who has spent the last 15 years helping her Spanish-speaking clients fill out forms, translate documents and navigate the federal bureaucracy. She earns roughly $60,000 a year, and says that she could make several times that amount if she emulated the practices of some of her more nefarious competitors. "I've gotten two or three calls over the last month from people saying, 'Let's go into business together, this is the time to start making a lot of money,' " Ms. Reyes said.

By her estimation, more than half her counterparts should be put out of business, because they are either scam artists or incompetents selling skills they do not possess.

"What's scary right now," Ms. Reyes said, "is that people are saying, 'Whatever it takes, whatever I must pay to become legal.' "

"It's that attitude that people can take advantage of," she added.

Over the past three years, Greg Abbott, the Texas attorney general, has secured judicial orders to shut down a dozen notarios around the state. That includes the Aplicación de Oro, a large immigration consulting firm in West Texas that a judge ordered closed in January after Mr. Abbott said that its two owners had "scammed" hundreds of immigrants out of thousands of dollars each, according to a press release. In California, the state attorney general, Bill Lockyer, has obtained civil judgments against roughly two dozen immigration consultants since 2000, a department spokesman said.

But advocates for immigrants say that California and Texas are the exception to the rule, and that most local district attorneys, who are also charged with monitoring consumer fraud, contend that their resources are too thinly stretched to devote much — if any — time to investigating immigration consultants. Moreover, advocates say, the problem is so widespread in California, Texas, New York and other states where illegal immigrants tend to live that even the most well-meaning efforts seem futile.

"The authorities will close down one of these shops, and a couple of weeks later they'll open up someplace else," said Mr. Nieblas, who is also an officer in the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "There are literally hundreds of these businesses in the Los Angeles area alone that are targeting the community."

At the moment, the most common fraud perpetuated on illegal immigrants — and certainly the most lucrative — is the kind that Mr. Mejia and his new lawyer believe almost had him sent back to Guatemala. "There are any number of immigration scams, but the asylum scam is by far and away the most popular right now," said Nora Privitera, a lawyer for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco. The brilliance of asylum fraud, at least from the perspective of the perpetrator, is that the federal government ends up sending most of the casualties back to their lands of origin.

There are two general versions of the asylum scheme. The more simple of the two has a lawyer or notario convincing an illegal immigrant to pay the going rate of about $5,000 — more if a client is willing to pay for appeals — to apply for asylum. The payment changes hands, even though the illegal immigrant is unlikely to secure asylum status, which is meant for those who would face persecution back in their home country if they were deported.

That is among the accusations that the State Bar of California was leveling at Walter Pineda, an immigration lawyer, in a San Francisco hearing room last week. According to immigration experts, people typically emigrate from Mexico to search for better economic opportunities, not because they fear for their safety. Even so, Mr. Pineda routinely encouraged his Mexican clients to file "meritless" asylum applications, according to the state bar, which has accused him of more than two dozen counts of incompetence and five counts of moral turpitude for what it called "repeatedly and knowingly" lying to his clients.

The bar association contends that Mr. Pineda would routinely "take client money to file frivolous applications, spend no time actually trying to develop a viable position for the clients to stay legally in the United States, lose the applications for asylum and take more money to file frivolous appeals."

Doron Weinberg, Mr. Pineda's lawyer, said, "We admit to the general facts, but as you can imagine, we deny every judgment that has my client doing something reprehensible."

An immigration lawyer typically works hard for a $5,000 fee — assembling evidence, prepping witnesses, drawing up arguments to convince a skeptical immigration hearing officer that a client deserves asylum. Then there are cases like those of Mr. Mejia, the Guatemalan handyman who lost $6,600 pursuing his asylum case.

Guatemalan rebels kidnapped Mr. Mejia, the son of a government employee, when he was 7 years old and the country was in the midst of a prolonged civil war; two years after securing his release, his family fled Guatemala for the United States. Like so many illegal immigrants, Mr. Mejia and his parents did their best to live their lives out of the view of the authorities — until a family friend referred Mr. Gadda to them a half-dozen years ago.

Another lawyer might have been able to make a credible case that Mr. Mejia deserved asylum. But Mr. Gadda apparently was unwilling or unable to do so. Mr. Mejia says he believes his own experience reflects the accusations that the California bar made against Mr. Gadda: that he proved willing to collect fees but not to do the work for which he was paid.

"This was a lawyer who took money from his clients and repeatedly failed to perform legal services," said Sherrie B. McLetchie, the lead lawyer for the California bar in the disbarment proceedings against Mr. Gadda. And the undocumented "are among the most vulnerable clients any lawyer can represent," she said.

Despite his travails, Mr. Mejia stayed the course. It would eventually cost him over $10,000 more in legal fees beyond what he paid Mr. Gadda, but Ilyce Shugall, a local immigration lawyer, was able to secure him a green card in April. "I worked after work, and I worked on weekends," to pay the added fees, Mr. Mejia said.

Ms. Shugall said that Mr. Gadda "had made such a mess out of the asylum claim that we decided to drop it." Instead, Ms. Shugall, who works for the law firm of Van Der Hout, Brigagliano & Nightingale in San Francisco, pursued an alternative claim known as a "cancellation-of-removal" order. Such orders grant green cards to anyone who has lived in the United States for at least 10 years and can demonstrate that a parent or a child in the country legally would suffer "exceptional and unusual hardship" if the applicant was deported. Mr. Mejia, who arrived here in the late 1980's and later became the primary care provider for his ailing parents, met that criteria and won his green card.

MR. MEJIA was fortunate to have an advocate like Ms. Shugall, because cancellation-of-removal orders are often central to the other type of fraud involving an asylum claim. In it, a deceitful notario or lawyer tells potential clients that they qualify for a cancellation order, but does not disclose a crucial prerequisite: that even if they are care providers for a legal but ailing resident who is a parent or child, they must still prove that a loved one would suffer extreme hardship if the authorities deported the caregiver.

"That's a very difficult standard to meet, but people are not told that part of it," said Ms. Privitera of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. The most insidious aspect of this unfortunate legal strategy, Ms. Privitera said, is that first the lawyer or immigration consultant must get someone into the system, because only if there is a removal order in place can someone petition to have the order rescinded, which would lead to a green card. The simplest way to do this is to request asylum, so the client will typically pay thousands of dollars for a futile asylum claim and, after the loss, will spend thousands of dollars more to pursue a legalization strategy that is far more likely to snare a deportation order than a green card.

"Once you're in immigration court, there's only two ways out," Ms. Privitera said. "You get granted something, or you get told to leave. There's no prosecutorial discretion for people who come into court because they've been defrauded."

Illegal immigrants who escape this trap are those who find a capable lawyer willing to take on their botched cases before they are deported — immigrants like Silvia Castillo of San Jose, Calif. Ms. Castillo, along with four other plaintiffs, has filed a suit accusing Rose Ann Martinez, an immigration consultant, and several San Francisco Bay Area lawyers of conspiring "on a fraudulent immigration scheme." Ms. Castillo, a housekeeper and single mother of two, said the process cost her about $10,000.

According to the complaint, filed earlier this year in California, Ms. Martinez persuaded Ms. Castillo and her fellow plaintiffs, all of them illegal immigrants from Mexico, to pursue the cancellation-of-removal strategy. But, court papers say, Ms. Martinez never informed her clients that they also had to file an asylum application, which would put them in peril of deportation. The victims also contend that Ms. Martinez failed to tell them that a cancellation-of-removal order was rare and that they would be successful only if they also proved that their deportation would cause extreme hardship for a parent or child. Ms. Martinez declined to comment.

Because both of Ms. Castillo's children were born in the United States, they are citizens. But both are healthy. Ms. Castillo lost her case — and her family would have been forced to move back to Mexico if not for the intervention of Vaughan de Kirby, a San Francisco lawyer.

Mr. de Kirby was able to convince a judge that sending Ms. Castillo back to Mexico also meant deporting her two children, both of whom were in school at the time. He also was able to prove that her two daughters would experience extreme hardship if they were forced to leave the country, thereby clearing up the mess that he said Ms. Martinez — and the outside law firm she commissioned — had made of Ms. Castillo's case.

"Immigration consultants serve a valuable function, because they can operate at a cost factor for people who can't afford an attorney," Mr. de Kirby said. "But unfortunately they're not well regulated, and there are abuses."

Mr. Nieblas, the Los Angeles immigration lawyer, is not nearly so generous in his comments about notarios. He estimates that he meets with as many as 20 people a month who have shown up in his office after an immigration consultant has botched a case through incompetence or malfeasance. If it were up to him, he said, he would outlaw immigration consultants altogether.

Another Los Angeles immigration lawyer, Alan R. Diamante, says that "70 to 80 percent of my clients have either been victims of a notario, or a lawyer working together with a notario." He, too, says he does not believe that notarios play a legitimate role in handling the legal mechanics of immigration.

LIKE other lawyers interviewed for this article, both Mr. Nieblas and Mr. Diamante said that they would never advise clients to reveal their residency status to authorities on the chance that they might secure a cancellation-of-removal order. He said that the stakes were very high, and the chances of winning low.

"I've had clients come to me and say, 'I've got a son who is suffering from this disease or that disease, let me turn myself in,' " Mr. Nieblas said. "I always tell them no. But some then just find someone else to handle the case. They've heard from people on the streets that this is the perfect opportunity to get a green card, and they don't want to believe me — and they can always find a notario who'll take their case."

The undocumented are not always on the losing end of immigration schemes. In Chinatown in San Francisco, for instance, an immigrant can spend $20,000 to $40,000 over six to seven years fighting to secure a green card, said Steve W. Baughman, a local immigration lawyer. Alternatively, he said, the same person can find an unscrupulous consultant who, for roughly $5,000, "will teach you how to lie and cheat your way into a bogus asylum claim."

For example, the granting of asylum is nearly automatic for a Chinese expatriate who claims religious and political persecution because he or she is a member of the Falun Gong spiritual sect. So some immigration consultants, Mr. Baughman said, maintain libraries of materials and videos about the group so that illegal immigrants can fake membership in Falun Gong when an asylum officer quizzes them.

"I can hardly blame people for doing it," he said. "It's the supply side that needs to be dealt with."

The federal government's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Chris Bentley, a spokesman, does what it can to spread the word that illegal immigrants must be careful about whom they turn to when seeking legal assistance. "If people snuck in the country illegally, we still don't want them to be taken by someone hanging out a shingle on a street corner, claiming they're an immigration expert when they're not," Mr. Bentley said.

Yet the abuses of immigration consultants are hardly a top priority, Mr. Bentley acknowledged, for an agency now tucked inside the Department of Homeland Security.

The San Francisco district attorney's office will "vigorously prosecute any complaints we receive" about immigration consultants, said an assistant district attorney, June Cravett. Her office, she said, is trying to spread the word that it offers a haven for illegal immigrants who feel that they have been fleeced by a scam artist.

BUT limited resources mean that her office does not set up sting operations or the like, Ms. Cravett said. "Unfortunately, we haven't received that many complaints," she said.

The local authorities in Los Angeles have adopted a similar approach, said Mr. Diamante, a former president of the local Mexican American Bar Association. "They do one major token case every five years, it gets a lot of attention, and then that's it," he said.

Immigrant advocates and law enforcement officials in California point to the district attorney's office in Santa Clara County, in the heart of Silicon Valley, as a model enforcement program. But they say that while county officials have taken impressive steps to crack down on unscrupulous notarios, the office's experiences and limited resources still underscore how hard it is to rein in the problem.

"There are so many of them it's really hard to go after every single one," said Martha J. Donohoe, a deputy district attorney in the county who oversees her office's efforts to monitor immigration consultants. "Basically our focus has had to have been going after the really bad actors."

When she has a law clerk, Ms. Donohoe says, her office can monitor the immigration consultant industry more proactively. Otherwise, her office must wait until it receives complaints from local advocacy groups that represent illegal immigrants, she said.

"I hate to say it, but by the time we go after someone, they've typically hurt so many people," Ms. Donohoe said. "Typically it takes years to bring one of these cases, and the word has to really spread that someone is a bad, bad actor before we get people who are here illegally to bring a complaint."

DETROIT, June 9 — The Delphi Corporation, the auto parts supplier, reached an agreement on Friday with the United Automobile Workers union and General Motors that offered buyouts to all of its 24,000 workers and reduced the possibility of a crippling strike.

The plan, which G.M. will finance, expands a plan announced in March that covered 13,000 Delphi workers, and comes on the eve of the union's leadership convention, which begins Monday in Las Vegas.

Agreement on the buyouts allows the two companies and the union to focus negotiations on other crucial issues like the level of wage and benefit cuts at Delphi, the amount G.M. is willing to pay for buyouts and to subsidize workers' wages, and the number of workers who will be left at Delphi, once the cuts are made.

The situation also needs to be settled, analysts say, for G.M. to proceed with its own restructuring.

The broadened buyout offer will "really alleviate a lot of the uncertainty and take away a lot of the militant impetus in the union for a strike," said David L. Gregory, professor of labor relations at St. John's University Law School in New York.

Delphi, which filed for bankruptcy protection in October, is the country's biggest parts supplier. It was part of G.M. until it was spun off in 1999. G.M. remains liable for pension and retirement health care benefits for Delphi workers who were at the automaker before the spinoff.

On March 22, G.M. offered buyouts ranging from $35,000 to $140,000 to all 113,000 of its hourly workers and 13,000 of the 24,000 U.A.W. members at Delphi. In addition, it agreed to take back 5,000 Delphi workers.

After announcing that deal, Delphi asked a federal bankruptcy judge for permission to set aside its labor contracts and impose sharply lower wage rates and less-generous benefits. Delphi also said it would close or sell 21 of its 29 plants in the United States, and cut 20,000 hourly jobs, many held by U.A.W. members.

In return, the U.A.W. threatened to strike Delphi if that happened, a move that could cripple G.M. Last month, workers voted to give leaders the authority to call a strike.

Since then, the issue has played out at the negotiating table and in court. Hearings on Delphi's request to set aside its contracts began last month, and the union had been set to present its case this week.

But on Friday, a federal judge postponed the hearings until Aug. 11, easing the likelihood of a strike before then, since the U.A.W. contract remains in effect. And, the additional time increases the prospects that the two companies and the union will come to terms.

In a statement, Delphi said it was "committed" to reaching a deal outside of court. The U.A.W., for its part, said the additional time would allow it, Delphi and G.M. to focus on negotiations without the "distraction" of the court hearings.

A spokeswoman for G.M., which has not said how much it expects the buyouts to cost, said the broadened plan was a "win-win all the way around."

Analysts said the development was promising.

"It's a very encouraging sign, because it greatly reduces the risk of a long strike," said one automotive analyst, John Casesa, managing partner of Casesa Strategic Advisers in New York. A lengthy walkout "is mutually assured destruction for G.M. and the U.A.W.," Mr. Casesa added.

But getting to a deal will require intense discussions that will ultimately reveal just how much G.M. is willing to pay to help overhaul its former parts supplier.

Delphi has proposed cutting Delphi workers' wages from about $28 an hour to $22 an hour, then to $16.50 an hour, assuming a subsidy of $50,000 a worker paid by G.M., which has not committed itself to the plan.

Without the subsidy, Delphi would cut wages next year to $12.50 an hour, or less than half what workers earn on their current contract, which is essentially the same as the contract at G.M.

The longer time for negotiations increases the chance that the U.A.W. will agree to some concessions, a move that experts say is generally inevitable once a company asks for its labor contracts to be set aside.

Still, "it's always superior if you can reach an agreement outside of court," Mr. Gregory of St. John's University Law School said.

Under the buyout plan, workers with at least 30 years experience, making them eligible to retire, would receive $35,000 and their complete retirement benefits including a pension and health care.

Workers with 10 to 26 years would receive $140,000 to leave, while workers with one to 10 years experience would receive $70,000. Both groups would receive a pension once they reached retirement age, but no health care benefits.

A small group of workers who joined Delphi in the last year, and received different benefits, would receive $40,000 to give up their jobs.

Another program would pay workers with 26 to 29 years of service a monthly stipend of $2,750 until they are eligible for retirement, if they will leave now. The plan originally applied to workers with 27 to 29 years experience, but was lowered by a year under the new program.

Claudia Piccinin, a Delphi spokeswoman, said the plan "allows us to more rapidly transform our U.S. manufacturing operations and also softens the economic impact on our hourly work force."

The deadline for accepting the buyouts at G.M. and Delphi is June 23; workers have a week after that to change their minds. Discussions continue with Delphi's five other unions on a similar buyout program.

G.M. lost $10.6 billion in 2005, and continues to lose money on its automotive operations despite posting a profit in the first quarter. G.M. wants to eliminate 30,000 jobs and close all or parts of a dozen plants through 2008, and it hopes to get that many workers to agree to its buyout plans.

Earlier this year, Delphi asked a federal judge to cancel hundreds of its parts contracts with G.M., an action that would allow it to raise the prices G.M. pays it for parts. The move ignited an angry reaction from G.M., which agreed last fall to give up discounts it had negotiated with Delphi so the company would have more cash at the beginning of its bankruptcy.

On Friday, the judge postponed a hearing on that request by Delphi until Aug. 11, allowing the two sides time to reach a deal in that dispute.

Expanding the buyouts at Delphi came as the U.A.W.'s lead negotiator, Richard Shoemaker, is set to retire next week. He also oversees talks with G.M., and is considered to be the union official closest to the U.A.W. president, Ron Gettelfinger.

Mr. Gettelfinger will choose a successor for Mr. Shoemaker at the U.A.W. convention next week. Whoever succeeds Mr. Shoemaker will immediately join Mr. Gettelfinger in the three-way discussions, which have been among the most difficult that the union has faced since the 1979 talks that resulted in concessions to Chrysler.

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3) Three Prisoners Commit Suicide at GuantánamoBy JAMES RISEN and TIM GOLDEN"They are smart, they are creative, they are committed," Admiral Harris said. "They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."June 11, 2006http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/us/11gitmo.html?hp&ex=1150084800&en=4e0a572a10c327d6&ei=5094&partner=homepage

WASHINGTON, June 10 — Three detainees being held at the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, committed suicide early on Saturday, the first deaths of detainees to be reported at the military prison since it opened in early 2002, United States military officials said.

The deaths come at a time of mounting international criticism of the Bush administration's handling of terrorism suspects at Guantánamo and other prisons around the world. President Bush, who was at Camp David on Saturday, expressed "serious concern" about the deaths, said Tony Snow, the White House spokesman.

The three detainees were not identified, but United States officials said two were from Saudi Arabia and the third was from Yemen. Military officials said that the three hanged themselves in their cells with nooses made of sheets and clothing and died before they could be revived by medical personnel.

Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the commander of the detention camp at Guantánamo, told reporters in a news conference that the deaths were discovered early on Saturday when a guard noticed something out of the ordinary in a cell and found that a prisoner had hanged himself. Admiral Harris said guards and a medical team rushed in to try to save the inmate's life but were unsuccessful. Then, guards found two other detainees in nearby cells had hanged themselves as well; all were pronounced dead by a physician.

Military officials on Saturday suggested that the three suicides were a form of a coordinated protest.

"They are smart, they are creative, they are committed," Admiral Harris said. "They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has opened an investigation into the deaths, and the State Department has notified the governments of Saudi Arabia and Yemen, according to a statement issued on Saturday by the United States Southern Command, the military organization that oversees Guantánamo.

All three men left suicide notes in Arabic, officials said. One of the detainees was a mid- or high-level Qaeda operative, another had been captured in Afghanistan and the third was a member of a splinter group, Admiral Harris said, in an account by The Associated Press. He said all three had participated in hunger strikes at the detention center.

He said the acts were tied to a "mystical" belief at Guantánamo that three detainees must die at the camp for all the detainees to be released. There have been 41 suicide attempts by 25 detainees since the facility opened, officials said.

Lawyers for the detainees, human rights groups and legal associations have increasingly questioned whether many of the prisoners can even rightfully be called terrorists. They note that only 10 of the roughly 465 men held at Guantánamo have been charged before military tribunals, and that recently released documents indicate that many have never been accused even in administrative proceedings of belonging to Al Qaeda or attacking the United States.

Advocates for the detainees said they believed the suicides resulted from the deep despair felt by inmates who are being held indefinitely.

"The total, intractable unwillingness of the Bush administration to provide any meaningful justice for these men is what is at the heart of these tragedies," said Bill Goodman, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the New York advocacy group that oversees lawyers representing many of the detainees. "We all had the sense that these men were getting more and more hopeless. There's been a general sense of desperation that's been growing."

Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer at Dorsey & Whitney in New York who represents one detainee who has repeatedly attempted suicide, said, "These men have been told they will be held at Guantánamo forever. They've been told that while they're held there they do not have a single right."

Foreign governments and international organizations have stepped up their criticism of detainee treatment at Guantánamo. Just last month, a United Nations treaty panel reviewing the United States' compliance with the international prohibition on torture argued that Guantánamo should be shut down. Last week, the Council of Europe issued a separate investigative report that said the United States had created a "reprehensible network" of dealing with terror suspects, highlighted by secret prisons believed to be in Eastern Europe and other nations around the world.

Responding to the growing furor over the issue in Europe, Mr. Bush said in an interview with German television in May that he would like to close the Guantánamo prison, but that his administration had to await the outcome of a Supreme Court ruling on whether the detainees should be tried by civilian courts or military commissions.

Meanwhile, the situation inside the detention center has grown more volatile in recent months, with reports that prisoners have engaged in hunger strikes, suicide attempts and violent attacks on guards.

Lawyers for the detainees have predicted for months that some would kill themselves. They have complained repeatedly about their access to the detainees, and have litigated in federal courts to try to get more information about the prisoners' medical and psychological health.

The lawyers have also strenuously protested the administration's efforts to have all litigation over the treatment of the detainees dismissed under the Detainee Treatment Act, a law signed by Mr. Bush on Dec. 30 that would strip the courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from detainees.

Action on nearly all of those petitions has been suspended in recent months, pending a ruling by the Supreme Court this month on the case of a former driver for Osama bin Laden.

In public statements, Defense Department officials have often dismissed the detainees' suicide attempts as less than serious and as the actions of trained Qaeda terrorists to manipulate public opinion. The first hunger strikes by detainees at Guantánamo began soon after the camp opened in January 2002, and two of those prisoners were forcibly fed through tubes that year. Dozens of other suicide attempts followed.

Over one eight-day period in August 2003, 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves, including 10 on a single day. But the Pentagon did not disclose the episode until January 2005, and lawyers for the detainees have complained about what they say has been a pattern in which the government has withheld information about suicide attempts or minimized their importance.

In late 2003, military officials at Guantánamo began to re-classify many of the suicide attempts as "manipulative, self-injurious behavior" that was intended to bring pressure for better conditions or for release. Officials at Guantánamo acknowledged that those designations were not necessarily made after any formal psychological evaluation.

But early last summer, as a new wave of protests broke out, officials at Guantánamo and at the Pentagon grew increasingly concerned, Defense Department officials said.

Doctors overseeing the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo sought new guidance from the Pentagon about the circumstances under which they could force-feed hunger strikers by tubes inserted through their noses and into their stomachs. While Defense Department officials took new measures to try to break a wave of hunger strikes that began last summer, they also undertook a review of procedures they would follow for the possible burial of detainees or the transfer of their remains in the event that any of them succeeded in committing suicide, military officials said.

Military officials began trying to discourage the detainees from killing themselves in part by having military and medical personnel cite passages in the Koran that condemn suicide. The detainees were systematically told that annual reviews of their status as "enemy combatants" had been completed, that they would remain at Guantánamo for at least another year, and that they should reconcile themselves to the situation, Defense Department officials said.

The military's review of the hunger-strike issue, which included senior Pentagon officials and officers of the United States Southern Command, which oversees Guantánamo, eventually led to a decision to begin strapping those detainees who refused to eat into metal "restraint chairs" while they were force-fed.

After the use of the chairs was disclosed by The New York Times in February, military officials insisted that they were acting only to save the lives of hunger-striking detainees who were precariously close to serious harm or death.

Interviews with military officials indicated that only a handful of the detainees who were then being force-fed had lost so much weight that they were classified by doctors there as "severely malnourished." The restraint chair was used on all of those who refused to eat, military officials said, regardless of their medical condition.

For months after the use of the restraint chairs became public, lawyers for the detainees and other critics of United States detention policy predicted that the tougher measures would push the prisoners to take more radical steps to end their lives.

What may have been the most serious such incident before Saturday's suicides came on May 18, when two detainees were found unconscious in their cells after ingesting a large quantity of anti-anxiety medication that various prisoners had apparently hoarded for the purpose. Another detainee said he had also tried to commit suicide but did not have enough medication; military officials said they did not believe his attempt had been serious.

Military officials said other detainees violently attacked guards in subsequent searches of their cells. A few of the detainees have since told their lawyers that the upheaval was provoked by guards who mistreated the prisoners' Korans as they tore through their cells.

Another brief hunger strike began barely two weeks later, the military authorities said, and eventually involved some 75 detainees. The chief spokesman for the military task force charged with guarding and interrogating the detainees, Cmdr. Robert Durand of the Navy, described that episode, like others before it, as an "attention getting" effort intended to increase public pressure for their release.

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4) How Hispanics Became the New GaysBy FRANK RICHJune 11, 2006http://select.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/opinion/11rich.html?hp

HE never promised them the Rose Garden. But that's where America's self-appointed defenders of family values had expected President Bush to take his latest stand against same-sex marriage last week. In the end, without explanation, the event was shunted off to a nondescript auditorium in the Executive Office Building, where the president spoke for a scant 10 minutes at the non-prime-time hour of 1:45 p.m. The subtext was clear: he was embarrassed to be there, a constitutional amendment "protecting" marriage was a loser, and he feared being branded a bigot. "As this debate goes forward, every American deserves to be treated with tolerance and respect and dignity," Mr. Bush said.

That debate died on the floor of the Senate less than 48 hours later, when the amendment went down to an even worse defeat than expected. Washington instantly codified the moral: a desperate president at rock bottom in the polls went through the motions of a cynical and transparent charade to rally his base in an election year. Nothing was gained — even the president of the Family Policy Network branded Mr. Bush's pandering a ruse — and no harm was done.

Except to gay people. That's why the president went out of his way to talk about "tolerance" at this rally, bizarrely held on the widely marked 25th anniversary of the first mention of an AIDS diagnosis in a federal report. Mr. Bush knew very well that his participation in this tired political stunt, while certain to have no effect on the Constitution, could harm innocent Americans.

When young people hear repeatedly that gay couples aspiring to marital commitment are "undermining the moral fabric of the country, that stuff doesn't wash off," says Matt Foreman of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Most concretely, the Washington ruckus trickles down into sweeping assaults on gay partners' employee benefits and parental rights at the state level, as exemplified by a broadly worded referendum on the Virginia ballot this fall outlawing any kind of civil union. Had Mr. Bush really believed that his words had no consequences, he would have spoken in broad daylight at the White House and without any defensive touchy-feely bromides about "tolerance."

Mr. Bush prides himself on being tolerant — and has hundreds of photos of himself posing with black schoolkids to prove it. But his latest marriage maneuver is yet another example of how his presidency has been an enabler of bigots, and not just those of the "pro-family" breed.

The stars are in alignment for a new national orgy of rancor because Americans are angry. The government has failed to alleviate gas prices, the economic anxieties of globalization or turmoil in Iraq. Two-thirds of Americans believe their country is on the wrong track. The historical response to that plight is a witch hunt for scapegoats on whom we can project our rage and impotence. Gay people, though traditionally handy for that role, aren't the surefire scapegoats they once were; support for a constitutional marriage amendment, ABC News found, fell to 42 percent just before the Senate vote. Hence the rise of a juicier target: Hispanics. They are the new gays, the foremost political piñata in the election year of 2006.

As has not been the case with gay civil rights, Mr. Bush has taken a humane view of immigration reform throughout his political career. Some of this is self-interest; he wants to cater to his business backers' hunger for cheap labor and Karl Rove's hunger for Hispanic voters. But Mr. Bush has always celebrated and promoted immigrants and never demonized them — at least in Texas. In the White House, he sidelined immigration after 9/11, then backed away from a "guest worker" proposal when his party balked in 2004. After bragging about his political capital upon re-election, he squandered it on Iraq and a quixotic campaign to privatize Social Security. Now Congress has acted without him, turning immigration reform into a deadlocked culture war not unlike the marriage amendment. A draconian federal law is unlikely, but the damage has been done: the ugly debate has in itself generated a backlash against a vulnerable minority.

Most Americans who are in favor of stricter border enforcement are not bigots. Far from it. But some politicians and other public figures see an opportunity to foment hate and hysteria for their own profit. They are embracing a nativism and xenophobia that recall the 1920's, when a State Department warning about an influx of "filthy" and "unassimilable" Jews from Eastern Europe led to the first immigration quotas, or the 1950's heyday of Operation Wetback, when illegal Mexican workers were hunted down and deported.

"What a repellent spectacle," the Fox News anchor Brit Hume said when surveying masses of immigrant demonstrators, some of them waving Mexican flags, in April. Hearing of a Spanish version of "The Star-Spangled Banner," Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee, introduced a Senate resolution calling for the national anthem to be sung only in English. There was no more point to that gratuitous bit of grandstandingthan there was to the D.O.A. marriage amendment. Or more accurately, both had the same point: stirring up animosity against a group that can be branded an enemy of civilization as we know it.

The most pernicious demagogues on immigration often invoke national security as their rationale, but no terrorist has been known to enter the United States from Mexico. Even the arguments about immigrants' economic impact are sometimes a smokescreen for a baser animus. As John B. Judis of The New Republic documented in his account of Arizona's combustible immigration politics, the dominant fear in that border state has less to do with immigrants stealing jobs (which are going begging in construction and agriculture) than with their contaminating the culture through "Mexicanization." It's the same complaint that's been leveled against every immigrant group when the country's in this foul a mood.

That mood was ratcheted up last week by the success of Brian Bilbray's strategy in winning the suburban San Diego House seat vacated by the jailed Duke Cunningham. Mr. Bilbray, a card-carrying lobbyist, was thought to be potentially vulnerable even in a normally safe Republican district. But by his own account, his campaign took off once he started hitting the single issue of immigration, taking a hard line far to the right of the president who endorsed him. Mr. Bilbray goes so far as to call for the refusal of automatic citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants — a repudiation of the 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War to ensure citizenship to everyone born in the United States.

His victorious campaign set a tone likely to be embraced by other Republicans fearful of a rout in 2006. The election year is still young, and we haven't seen the half of this vitriol yet. Some politicians, like Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, are equal-opportunity bigots: when he isn't calling for the Senate to declare English the national language and demanding that immigrants be quizzed on the Federalist Papers (could he pass?), he is defending marriage by proclaiming that in his family's "recorded history" there has never been "any kind of homosexual relationship." (Any bets on how long before someone unearths the Inhofes' unrecorded history?) Vernon Robinson, a Republican Congressional candidate challenging the Democratic incumbent Brad Miller in North Carolina, has run an ad warning that "if Miller had his way, America would be nothing but one big fiesta for illegal aliens and homosexuals."

The practitioners of such scare politics know what they're up to. That's why they so often share the strange psychological tic of framing their arguments in civil-rights speak. The Minuteman Project, the vigilante brigade stoking fears of an immigration Armageddon, quotes Gandhi on its Web site; its founder, Jim Gilchrist, has referred to his group as "predominantly white Martin Luther Kings." On a Focus on the Family radio show, James Dobson and the White House press secretary, Tony Snow, positioned the campaign to deny gay civil rights as the moral equivalent of L.B.J.'s campaign to extend civil rights. James Sensenbrenner, the leading House Republican voice on immigration policy, likened those who employ illegal immigrants to "the 19th-century slave masters" that "we had to fight a civil war to get rid of." For that historical analogy to add up, you'd have to believe that Africans voluntarily sought to immigrate to America to be slaves. Whether Mr. Sensenbrenner is out to insult African-Americans or is merely a fool is a distinction without a difference in this volatile political climate.

Mr. Bush is a lame duck, but he still has a bully pulpit. Here is a cause he has professed to believe in since he first ran for office in Texas, and it's threatening to boil over in an election year. Imagine if he exercised leadership and called out those who trash immigrants rather than merely mouthing homilies about tolerance and dignity.

Tolerance and dignity are already on life-support in this debate. If the president doesn't lead, he will have helped relegate Hispanics to the same second-class status he has encouraged for gay Americans. Compassionate conservatism, R.I.P.

Dahr Jamail and Jeff Pflueger | Propaganda and Haditha"Propaganda is when the Western corporate media tries to influence public opinion in favor of the Iraq War by consistently tampering with truth and distorting reality," write Jamail and Pflueger. "It is to be expected. And it is to be recognized for what it is."http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060906J.shtml

Zarqawi Is Dead, but Weary Iraqis Fear the Violence Won't SubsideAs news of Mr. Zarqawi's death settled into homes across the country, Iraqis at lunch tables and in living rooms found themselves wondering what, if anything, would be different. A relentless stream of killings and kidnappings has choked the routines of life to a trickle, and the death of Mr. Zarqawi, while welcome, did not seem likely to stop the violence.http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060906K.shtml

A.K. Gupta | Why Zarqawi's Death May Strengthen the Iraqi Resistance"Bombing Zarqawi into oblivion will not end the resistance in Iraq. In fact, it may do the opposite," writes A.K. Gupta. "Zarqawi was a polarizing figure, a non-Iraqi promoting sectarian warfare. While the sectarianism in Iraq has become too entrenched to undo easily, his death creates space for Sunni resistance groups that were opposed to attacking Shiites."http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060906L.shtml

Soldiers Quit Army in Protest After Acquittal on Boy's DeathTwo soldiers cleared this week of the manslaughter of a 15-year-old Iraqi in Basra in May 2003 are to leave the army in protest at their treatment.http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060906N.shtml

US Prison Study Faults System and the PublicNot only are America's prisons and jails largely failing the 13.5 million adults who pass through them each year, but the American public is also failing the prisons and jails, a bipartisan study group concluded in a report released Wednesday.http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060906O.shtml

Sarah Olson | Military Officer Gains National Support for Resisting DeploymentWhen 27-year-old US Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada announced his refusal to deploy to Iraq yesterday, he did so surrounded by veterans, military family members, and members of the religious and anti-war communities. News of Watada's intent to refuse his orders to deploy to Iraq has galvanized anti-war communities around the country.http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060806R.shtml

King Archives Will Be Sold at AuctionBy SHAILA DEWANJune 9, 2006http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/09/us/09king.html?hp&ex=1149912000&en=c7c04f11c747eb7d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

COMMISSIONED U.S. ARMY OFFICER ANNOUNCES IRAQ WAR RESISTANCEBy Mark JensenLt. Ehren Watada, barred from attending, announces his decision via video United for Peace of Pierce County (WA)June 7, 2006http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4618/

'U.S. Military Hides Many More Hadithashttp://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0607-02.htm

The police are "dropping bags"2006-06-06June 6, 2006 10:23 PMAccording to the Toronto Star, the three tons of ammonium nitrate found with the Toronto terrorism suspects was planted by the police in an elaborate sting operation.http://www.innworldreport.net/#

FOCUS | Freedom Not Extended to Women in New IraqAcross Iraq, a bloody and relentless oppression of women has taken hold. Many women have had their heads shaved for refusing to wear a scarf or have been stoned in the street for wearing make-up. Others have been kidnapped and murdered for crimes that are being labelled simply as "inappropriate behavior." The insurrection against the fragile and barely functioning state has left the country prey to extremists whose notion of freedom does not extend to women.http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060806Z.shtml

U.S. Strike Hits Insurgent at SafehouseBy JOHN F. BURNSBAGHDAD, Iraq, June 8 — Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in an American airstrike on an isolated safe house north of Baghdad at 6:15 p.m. local time on Wednesday, top American and Iraqi officials said today. Islamic militant Web sites linked to Al Qaeda quickly confirmed the death, saying Mr. Zarqawi had been rewarded with "martyrdom" for his role in the war here.June 8, 2006http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/08/world/middleeast/08cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1149825600&en=d6d9b3b68ae5cc4a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Senate Emphasis on Ideology Has Some in G.O.P. AnxiousBy CARL HULSEJune 7, 2006http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/07/washington/07cong.html

Military Alters the Makeup of Interrogation AdvisersBy NEIL A. LEWISWASHINGTON, June 6 — Pentagon officials said Tuesday that they would try to use only psychologists, and not psychiatrists, to help interrogators devise strategies to get information from detainees at places like Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.The new policy follows by little more than two weeks an overwhelming vote by the American Psychiatric Association discouraging its members from participating in those efforts.June 7, 2006http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/07/washington/07detain.html

Size of Identity Theft Grows to Affect MillionsBy THE NEW YORK TIMESWASHINGTON, June 6 — Personal information stolen from the home of a Veterans Affairs employee included data on 2.2 million active-duty members of the military, the government said on Tuesday.June 7, 2006http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/07/washington/07identity.html?hp&ex=1149739200&en=e93e0577e119de12&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Israel's "Right to Exist"The insistence on Arabic acceptance of Israel's "right to exist" isracist without a similar insistence for Israel to accept Palestine's"right to exist."http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/1728889.php

FOCUS: Eric Schaeffer | Junketing Judges: A Case of Bad Science Last fall, after two judges attended a six-day seminar at Yellowstone National Park sponsored by a lobbying group, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Clean Air Act does not require regulating carbon dioxide emissions that are heating up the planet at an unprecedented rate. Eric Schaeffer wonders, "Just how far will corporate lobbyists go to tilt governmental decisions in their favor?"http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060406X.shtml

BAGHDAD MORGUE REPORTS RECORD FIGURES FOR MAYBy Louise RougNearly 1,400 bodies were brought to the facility, the highest number since the war began. Los Angeles TimesJune 4, 2006http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq4jun04,0,4394686.story?coll=la-home-headlines

FOCUS | Army Manual to Skip Geneva Convention Detainee Rule The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060506Z.shtml

VIDEO | Largest Urban Farm in the Country on the Verge of EvictionA Report by Chris HumeThe South Central Farm is like an oasis. Situated in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, it is a haven for the poor working people of the area, where they can grow and sell their own food locally. But they face eviction. Truthout correspondent Chris Hume interviews Daryl Hannah, Julia Butterfly Hill, and the local farmers about their struggle to stay on the land they've been farming for 14 years.http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm

Assassinations and Cover-up #4"M.L. King Murder A Government Plot,"Says Former CIA Participant. "I was part of it.""Raoul" Identified as FBI Agentby Pat ShannanNew evidence has surfaced in the 1968 Martin Luther King murder case. It is supplied by an "insider" who claims to have been part of a "hit team" that had come out of the "Missouri Mafia" headquartered in the town of Caruthersville, a small town in the bootheel section of that state. In a yet-to-be-published book, former County Deputy Jim Green reveals his assigned role in the conspiracy, the name of the actual trigger man, and the long-suspected involvement of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Green also believes that he possesses the actual murder weapon, which he personally secreted away only hours after the murder.http://www.patshannan.bizland.com/mlkgreen.html

Cubans Jailed in U.S. as Spies Are Hailed at Home as HeroesBy Manuel Roig-FranziaWashington Post Foreign ServiceSaturday, June 3, 2006; Page A01http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/02/AR2006060201780.html

Danny Schechter | Media Crimes Sanitize War Crimes in IraqDanny Schechter writes, "As events in Iraq continue to slip from bad to worse, the good news brigade is scrambling for new stories ('anything, give me anything') to shore up what's left of public support for a bloody war without end."http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060206A.shtml

Union: Scrapping pacts not neededBy LARRY RINGLER Tribune ChronicleNEW YORK — Union attorneys spent Friday afternoon in Delphi Corp.’s bankruptcy hearing building a case that the company doesn’t need to scrap its labor pacts to cut labor costs because the unions have agreed to cut jobs.June 2, 2006http://www.tribune-chronicle.com/news/articles.asp?articleID=4353

FOCUS | New "Iraq Massacre" Tape EmergesThe BBC has uncovered new video evidence that US forces may have been responsible for the deliberate killing of 11 innocent Iraqi civilians. The video appears to challenge the US military's account of events that took place in the town of Ishaqi in March. The US said at the time four people died during a military operation, but Iraqi police claimed that US troops had deliberately shot the 11 people.http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060206Z.shtml

The List: The World's Water CrisesIf oil was the resource of the 20th century, then the 21st century belongs to water. The lack of clean water and basic sanitation already curbs world economic growth by $556 billion a year, according the World Health Organization. FP looks at four countries struggling to quench their thirst.http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3473